What do you mean: Phony King of England? (And other humerous things)
by Mx4
Summary: Newest Chapter: If Game of Thrones casting reflected fanfic writers (part 1 of however many I can be arsed to make)
1. Wherein a Prince gets what he deserves

Gaery Steward Baratheon was sure of his stance on this. And he knew that it was better he bring this to a head now before his opponent had time enough to formulate a counterattack or prepare for his plan. As he waited for the one he'd asked to meet him in this room, the one he was sure was the source of the solution to his problems, he looked to the full moon as his hand ran across the back of his neck absently.

Despite his being the second rather than the firstborn prince, he had managed to inherit the best features of his mother Cersei Lannister and his father Robert Baratheon. His green eyes flashed with intelligence that more than one courier had whispered reminded them of a younger Tywin Lannister, his charming smile and boisterous laugh able to effortlessly charm just as his father and his uncle Tyrion did. He was particularly proud of his black hair however: its longer length and rougher feel making him a more down to earth, masculine contrast to his brother Joffrey's almost angelically blonde hair.

Though the thing two things that had won so many people to his side had to be his wit and his charm. His wit that he'd used to maneuver himself into his mother's good graces despite her inexplicable coldness toward him in addition to impressing Tywin Lannister himself with his tactical acumen. And his charm that had managed to bring a warm smile even to the frozen faces of the northern based Starks. From the Tyrells to the Starks, he was on decent terms with most every highborn family in the Seven Kingdoms.

That wasn't as much of an accomplishment as many would've thought. One simply had to know how to deal with each family on terms where they felt they could gain the power. The Tyrells were courteous but always scheming. His own mother's family appreciated the power of the cunning mind he brought to the Lannister name. His Baratheon uncle he actually liked (Renly of course) liked his sense of fun and humor while his other Baratheon uncle granted the appropriate respect that was due to a son of the king. The notoriously stand-offish Starks were impressed by his sense of honor while the Tullys had no complaints about his behavior when he'd seen them.

He was sure that given enough time and resources he could even manage to bring the Martells back to the fold: to get them to see that he was not his father, that he wanted to see justice for the murdered children, that this could be the era of a new peace in the seven kingdoms.

But then the cameras would shut off and the director would yell cut.

And then everyone would promptly begin to disperse to their own little groups while throwing him dirty glances: muttering something about interlopers and writer's pet.

He'd tried to ignore it for a time and find someone who liked him. More often than not he only found it in the supporting crew or cast. The unnamed extras who desperately wanted to get their face in front of a camera by any means necessary but hadn't been talented enough to make the cut. They all seemed to feel a strange kinship with him for some unknown reason. Yet still the named actors gave him a wide berth, scoffing if he tried to add his opinion to their thoughts on storylines or character development. Even going so far as to tell him to cry to his cheerleading shill (their name for his personal writer not his) if he didn't like the way they treated him when he protested.

Many a massage session with his writer had left him feeling relaxed, reassured of his high place among them. Knowing that he belonged on screen with them. But then it always faded once the next scene was done and the reality of their true feelings for him reasserted itself. So he'd decided to go all the way to the top. To find the inspiration behind the writer. He'd successfully arranged a meeting with this man, this Mr. Martin.

As he came into view, he wondered at this man who had been the origin of everyone but himself. Why was he so revered if he couldn't have conceived of someone as great as Gaery himself? He was a slightly overweight man with a greying beard and an ordinary cap, his hands hidden in pants that were apparently attached to his body via suspenders that came over his shoulders and a plain collared shirt. He even wore correction lenses upon his eyes, as though he were one of the maesters who spent so much of their life peering at the words by candlelight that they couldn't see properly anymore.

As he came forward, Gaery took a deep breath before slowly exhaling. He knew that if he could convince this man to tell the others he wasn't so bad, that things would work out for him. And that even if he couldn't convince him that he deserved their respect off-screen as well as on, than perhaps he could make their lives on-screen better and so win their off-screen respect that way. It was a plan that couldn't fail.

"Mr. Martin?" He inquired politely, standing up and feeling much more confident in his leather armor embroidered with the royal symbol of the lion and crowned stag meeting upon his chest.

The man looked at him, his gaze raking up and down him for a few moments before his mouth turned downward in the slightest of frowns. Gaery got the distinct impression he had been weighed, judged and found wanting.

"You know I am. You called me here." He said quietly, his words heavy in the air.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"I want you to make them respect me." Gaery said, getting straight to the point. He had expected Mr. Martin to argue, to ask for clarification. Instead he just looked at him. His gaze boring into his. Despite his on-screen accomplishments, despite his vaunted charisma and wit, Gaery felt himself breaking contact first.

"What did you say?" He asked.

Gaery looked back at him again, the low volume giving him the hope that Martin was considering what he had asked.

"The other characters, once the scenes are over, they don't show me the respect I deserve. You're the one they listen to. The one they take their cues from. If you told them to respect me as one of them they would do it." Gaery said.

"I don't think I'm asking much: I am Cersei and Robert's second child after all." He added as a carefully calculated afterthought.

"Why would I do that?" He inquired, tone still low and quiet.

Gaining confidence, Gaery flashed him a winning smile.

"Because we both know I deserve it. Because I can make their lives better for them and improve their stories." He said simply, knowing that the results that he and his own personal writer had collaborated to create would speak for themselves more than any embellishment he could add.

Instead of talking terms however, Martin simply scoffed dismissively at Gaery.

"Do you sincerely think you're the first one to make that claim?" He asked him.

For the first time in their conversation thus far Gaery thought he detected a note of menace in Mr. Martin's tone. The sliver of nervousness that shot through him was merely nerves at the abrupt dismissal he told himself. That's all it was. Nothing to be afraid of at all.

"I don't think Mr. Martin. I know." He answered, knowing that his confidence would win him over as it had so many others in the story his writer came up with. After all, his writer couldn't put it to paper if it wouldn't be true to life right?

Martin held up his right hand, middle finger and thumb held together in that pose that meant he was about to snap them.

"You know what Gaery?" He said to him as he took a step closer. "The others usually made the same claims. But you've finally convinced me. I think I can finally give you what you deserve without any reservations."

He smiled, his teeth showing in the moonlight. His fingers snapped like a whip cracking through the air.

Out of thin air what appeared to be a tall, bulky and black-haired smith's apprentice and his brother Joffrey took hold of his right and left arms respectively.

"Hold still brother." Joffrey hissed with a sarcastic emphasis on brother. "This'll only hurt a little."

Before Gaery could even process his words, Mr. Martin's right foot slammed into his (in his own humble opinion anyway) fairly impressive package. As he did, he could've sworn he felt like his crotch was trying to tunnel into his abdomen. With an undignified sound stuck somewhere between a mouse being trodden upon and a raven receiving a proctology exam, Ramsey and Joffrey let go of his arms as he collapsed to the ground on his right side. As his hands instinctively came down to shield one of his most vital areas from further harm, Mr. Martin was on his left side: facing Gary's front.

His foot impacted Gaery's ribs with a loud crack.

"You don't-" Martin began, interrupting himself to kick Gaery in the side again.

"Fucking-" He continued, another kick slamming into Gaery's nose with a loud thunk.

"Talk-" The fourth kick made a crunching noise as it shattered his nose.

"To me-" the fifth came into his sternum and made it difficult to even wheeze for an agonizing moment in time.

"Like that-" The sixth returned to Gaery's face, swelling one of his beautiful emerald eyes shut.

"You little-" A seventh kick to his chest. Gaery was starting to lose track of them he was in so much pain.

"Piece of Shit!" A final stomp on Gaery's left knee that had come to the stone ground trying to get him onto his front. He thought he heard a crack. He could barely gurgle as his lungs tried to get him to cough through the copper he smelt and tasted and saw.

The hits had stopped coming. Martin's voice was as cold as a white walker's non-existent bollocks as he commanded the others with him.

"Pick him up."

Gaery was hauled up by his shoulders, the pain robbing him of even the thought of putting up a fight. This wasn't a scripted fight scene where he knew he'd be alright. This was real. This was happening. And he had no idea how it was going to turn out.

Martin's somewhat pudgy fingers gripped Gaery by the hair in a manner that, had he not been wracked with agony all up and down his front, might've made him hiss in pain. He brought his face down next to Gaery's left ear before he whispered to him: his voice as sibilant as an enraged Dornish viper.

"I am so **_sick_** and **_tired_** of idiots like you. You puff up your own hot air, you stroke your own ego incessantly by inserting yourself into stories that are not yours to tell. And to make it worse, you show no respect to the world you claim to love so much while insisting that it must show the utmost love and respect to you." He angrily whispered.

"Most of the time I don't have a problem with your kind. I don't like them, but I tolerate them. I tolerate you and all the others like you for the same reason one tolerates a pimple on their ass: because the effort of lancing it out isn't worth it when it'll simply wash away to nothing given the unforgiving passage of time." He revealed.

His left hand flashed out and cracked Gaery across the side of his face he could still see with. His stinging cheek barely registered among the orchestra of injury that his front felt.

"But if you ever" Martin's fingers tightened in Gaery's hair for a moment.

"And I do mean **_ever_** , think to demand what you 'feel you deserve' from me or these people again, you and I will officially have a problem." He finished.

He let go of Gaery's hair and let his head limply fall to his chest as the secondborn Baratheon focused on getting his breathing to the point where it didn't hurt every time he inhaled and exhaled.

"So I'll only ask you this once. Do. We. Have. A. Problem?" He enunciated carefully.

Gaery took a few moments to get his breathing under control while trying in vain to keep the tears of pain and humiliation from his eyes.

"No." He whispered brokenly.

"What was that?" Martin asked crisply.

"No Mr. Martin sir." He repeated a bit louder, his voice in a slightly higher register than it had been at the start of this meeting.

"Good." Martin said smiling again. He waved his right hand dismissively as Joffrey and the black haired boy let go of Gaery's arms again.

"Now stay the hell out of my sight you pathetic insignificant little speck." He commanded as he walked away, loyal actors in tow as Gaery was left to try and stand on one uninjured leg, wondering how he was going to explain this unfortunate incident to his writer.

* * *

A/N: In case the above story isn't clear: I've found myself growing sick to death of the surprisingly big subset of fics where Robert & Cersei somehow conveniently have a trueborn kid AFTER Joffrey who, wouldn't you know it, proves he's just the solution to everyone's problems we didn't know we were looking for. Not just because they all seem to be following roughly the same tired plot with minor variations in pairings or things that make the "trueborn" [read: author self-projection] such a super special little snowflake of awesomesauce wrapped up in a perfect package or even because the only one that acknowledged how completely improbable the premise itself is was cxjenious's Harry Potter crossover wherein the only thing that kept "Harry the trueborn" alive was **literal magical intervention**. I'm mostly sick and tired of them because it's always a second born, he always is black haired with green eyes, he always gets sent to foster with Tywin, he's always almost perfect and he's always so drearily fucking above these "petty political games." I mean, if you're going to stack bullshit on top of self-insert fantasy on top of contrivance anyway, you may as well go for the gusto on it. Make the trueborn a princess instead of a prince. Make them a rash whoremongering hothead like daddy dearest. Make him long for the days of manly men and think he's gods gift to women while most of them would've slapped the taste out of his mouth if he wasn't the prince. Make them grow unhealthily obsessed the way both the parents are so very prone to. DO FREAKING SOMETHING TO CHANGE IT UP FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!

And to be clear, I don't have a problem with the ones that make Robert's trueborn the eldest because that at least was something from the show and the books you could use to explore new ideas and see about changing relationships and characters while growing things in new directions. I severely dislike the ones where after Cersei is already at the point of constantly avoiding having Robert in her AND being only with Jaime AND using moon tea on the few nights she can't avoid it AND having succeded in bearing Joffrey, somehow Robert impregnates her and against all odds the kid lives long enough to matter to the actual plot and the characters who matter. Just a personal opinion.


	2. Wherein a casting call goes awry

David Benioff liked to think he was a man somewhat used to the ins, outs and various through-ways that comprised the journey between a work being placed upon the written page and coming to life upon a screen whether big or small. When he and his co-producer Daniel Weiss managed to correctly guess the name of Jon Snow's mother and received authorial permission to commence filming a television adaptation to the popular book series A Song of Ice & Fire, he'd been happy but cautious. After all, simply because they had permission didn't mean they were even close to being ready to bring it to life yet.

There were still sets to plan, costumes to design but most important of all: actors to cast. The only two they knew from the beginning they were going to need were Sean Bean as the instigator of the whole chain of events Eddard Stark and Peter Dinklage as the only sympathetic lion Tyrion Lannister. Good men and great actors. They were very fortunate that George told them he had specifically had them in mind whenever he imagined those two central characters. They'd managed to find several of the others such as Catelyn Tully and Jon Snow. But the time had come for the royal family.

Mark Addy and Lena Hedley had given very solid auditions earlier today. They were now getting into the royal children: the supposed future kings or queen of Westeros who were in truth going to be revealed as Cersei's bastards by her twin brother Jaime. Even though that meant in the show they were all going to be blonde haired like their mother, in practice it translated to the actor being picked for what they could do rather than their hair color.

With a look to Dan and George as they sat in their chairs, they signaled for the first applicant to give it a shot.

He strode in, bold as brass. Black hair, green eyes. Decent in stature, seemed to have a good confidence to him. David wasn't sure he would top Jack Gleeson's audition as Joffrey, but maybe he'd be able to turn it off and become a Tommen that would prove an interesting character.

As a formality they had him state which part he was trying out for. Coincidentally, that was also when things began to go to hell.

"I'm trying out for the part of Steffon Baratheon." He answered.

Silence reigned in the room as Dan and he looked at each other while George's right eyebrow raised a bit.

"Well, unless David and Dan aren't telling me something, we're not going to be seeing Robert's father appear on the show." George chuckled.

"No, no, not Steffon Baratheon as in Robert's father. Steffon Baratheon as in Robert's son who is named for Robert's father." The man (what was his name? Gary something?) said.

Silence again. David wondered if the other two were starting to get a splitting headache like he himself was. But he pushed forward, deciding to give the aspiring actor (rapidly becoming classified more as a pompous ass) a chance to correct his mistaken assumption.

"You know your character's name is Tommen right? You're…the younger brother of Joffrey? Son of Cersei Lannister who doesn't know he's the son of her brother Jaime Lannister?" He asked.

An incredulous frown came across the performer's face.

"Who are you talking about? Steffon Baratheon is the trueborn son of Robert." He said.

David could see Dan glancing at him and raising both his eyebrows as if to say: "What the hell is going on here?" At least, that's what David thought he was saying. Mostly because that's what David himself was thinking.

"…I never wrote Robert as having a trueborn son." Came the cold interjection of George on his other side.

The guy seemed to mentally wave off George's observation as though it were a buzzing gnat he didn't want in his ear. He cleared his throat and began to speak.

"How can you eat so carelessly? A young boy-the son of the people who've welcomed us into their home-may be dying. And yet you sit here with such carelessness-"

"Stop!" David called, his headache worsening.

The black haired ass looked irritated at being interrupted.

"What the hell was that?" David asked, pinching his nose between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

"My character was reprimanding his older brother for not caring that Bran Stark was hurt." He answered with a smile. "He liked the Starks as soon as he met them thus leading to an easy friendship with Robb and then-"

David honestly couldn't believe what he was hearing. He couldn't believe this prick had the temerity to try and make up a character who was not only a trueborn son of Robert and Cersei but born after she had already dedicated herself to cheating with Jaime and making sure to use Robert's drunken, lecherous behavior against him in order to never let him between her thighs. And not only that but the snippet of dialogue he started on was apparently meant to be the spare prince reprimanding the **_heir to the throne_** about his attitude. Now, no one had ever accused the screenplay he'd written for _Troy_ of being overthought. But still: every screen-writing instinct in him cried foul against the decidedly idiotic yet apparently supposed to noble dialogue.

"Question." Dan interjected as David could feel George's cold stare bearing down on the side of his head for this jackass's presumption. He sincerely hoped the world renowned author wasn't reconsidering whether to let them make the show or not because one self-deluded crazy had snuck their way into casting.

"What does this 'trueborn' son of Robert and Cersei look like?" He asked.

The pompous one appeared to be giving it some thought before he opened his mouth again and David's headache immediately doubled in intensity.

"Midnight black hair, Lannister green eyes, a smile that charmed a northern maiden, good musculature…"

As Gary prattled on (David privately thought it was no wonder he was in show business since with a last name like Suebert behind him it was either this or a chip n dales which he decidedly did not have the body for) about the looks of this imaginary Baratheon, David felt reasonably certain that George and Dan had noticed the same thing he did: namely, that this imaginary Baratheon's description read an awful lot like Gary's own appearance, except with the looks and personality considerably…enhanced in the retelling.

Did the guy not realize he sounded exactly like Stephanie Myer had when she was asked to describe Bella Swan's appearance?

"Thank you, we'll be in touch." David said as Gary paused to take a breath after having taken George's sarcastic question of how 'Steffon' would solve every problem in Westeros literally and having listed off how seemingly everything in the world was miraculously better for his presence in it.

Gary looked vaguely constipated and confused: as though he had gone to the bathroom in order to take a dump but now couldn't remember the process for doing so.

"But I wasn't-" The self-important narcissist began before David interrupted him again.

"That wasn't an invitation to stay. Get. Out." He ground out through the deep drums in his skull beating a war tune that demanded he pound the idea that a character is **_NOT_** supposed to be their creator's ego stroking self-aggrandizement, especially not when it's being added onto an already established work like a throbbing, cancerous pustule to otherwise healthy skin.

As the door closed behind him, David could only apologize to George for the crazy somehow getting in. He'd smiled and said it was alright. Of course he didn't quite feel the same when the next three idiots that marched in all seemed to have the exact same idea of trying out for the 'trueborn second son' character that didn't exist even if they gave different names.

Jasper, Roland and Lyonel they apparently were. After wondering with some exasperation where they had even gotten such names from, David was kind of relieved to have the third one call his "original" character Lyonel. Admittedly, that was because the one who claimed the true-born second son's name would be Lyonel had gotten David to laugh at the sheer absurdity of Cersei Lannister for some god unknown reason giving any child of hers a name purely as a joke. Which of course had caused an offended look to appear on the hopeful's face at which point David was forced to realize that it hadn't actually meant to be a joke: that the honest to god best they could apparently come up with for a name was an unintentional pun that was too weak to have been used in a seventies sketch comedy, let alone on Game of Thrones.

George and Dan were visibly exasperated by now so David asked how many more auditions were they supposed to sit through. The PA who'd come with them for this said about fifty.

If David had been listening carefully, he would've heard his own patience snap.

"No." He said quietly, standing with deliberate slowness even as Dan and George had slumped forward in dejection at the amount of dross left to sort through just so they could find a possible Tommen or Joffrey.

"I'm…sorry sir?" She asked uncertainly.

"No." He repeated as he walked around the table toward the door that led into the hallway.

"Sir, where are you going?!" The PA asked in alarm.

"No." He repeated one last time as he flung open the door.

A sea of black hair and green eyes looked back at him. His eyes hardened into chips of ice before he bellowed at the top of his lungs at them.

"ATTENTION ALL HOPEFULS PRESENT! WE ARE NOT GOING TO CAST YOU AS YOURSELF IN THE MEDIEVAL FANTASY SETTING OF A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE!" David took less than a moment to get prepare himself, intensely aware of so many offended faces opening their mouths for something besides breathing for the first time with offended looks in their otherwise dull eyes.

"I HONESTLY DON'T GIVE A RAT **SHIT** IF YOU THINK YOU'RE GOD'S GIFT TO WESTEROS! WE ALREADY HAVE ALL THE CHARACTERS WE NEED! IF YOUR EGO CAN BEAR THE THOUGHT OF IT, YOU ARE WELCOME TO REGISTER YOURSELF AS A BATTLEFIELD OR KING'S LANDING EXTRA! IF, HOWEVER, YOU WANT TO TAKE A SHOT AT CONVINCING ME THAT YOU TRULY BELONG IN WESTEROS: I CAN TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT YOU DON'T! I COULD SAY YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU MAKE NO EFFORT TO HIDE THE MODERN SENSIBILITIES THAT NO ACTUAL POTENTIAL MONARCH WOULD POSSESS! I COULD SAY YOU DON'T BECAUSE NONE OF YOU SEEM TO HAVE ANY IDEA OF HOW THINGS COULD BE DIFFERENT ASIDE FROM 'INSERT MYSELF AS ROBERT AND CERSEI'S KID SO I CAN GO AGAINST JOFFREY AND FIX EVERYTHING WITHOUT IT COMING ACROSS AS **TOO** EASY!' BUT I WON'T!" David felt good to get all this off his chest. Those four auditions had really taken more out of him than he thought.

"IN YOUR IDIOTIC EFFORTS TO ALL TAKE THE SAME SHORTCUTS, YOU IDIOTS HAVE GIVEN YOURSELVES AWAY! I HONESTLY DON'T CARE IF YOU LIKE WHAT I'M SAYING OR NOT: JUST KINDLY FUCK OFF BACK TO TWILIGHT WHERE YOU BELONG EITHER WAY!" David concluded.

Amidst much grumbling, pretty much the entire lobby existed either alone or in pairs until there was a single girl left. Fixing her with a gimlet eye, David asked: "And why are you here?"

She seemed uncomfortable with the attention he was giving.

"I-I'm here as the trueborn daughter-"

"Leave. Now." David dismissed.

She bolted without another sound, sprinting away from the angry producer like a frightened doe.

Filled with relief at that potential time wasting disaster averted, David asked the PA who had come up behind him what was on the schedule for tomorrow.

"More auditions for royal family and casting for Stark family if those get done quickly enough." She told him.

David nodded with satisfaction. He'd gotten some crazies with strange ideas about what constituted respecting canon today, but surely things wouldn't be so bad for the Stark family auditions. Right?

* * *

A/N: Once again, I find myself frustrated at the vast majority of fics that seem convinced that they're 'original' because they decide they simply must insert themselves into Game of Thrones as an OC so they can show George just what he was missing out on by not being smart enough to include them as savior of the universe. "Oh wow, the second son of Robert and Cersei is the true savior of all Westeros? And they also happen to share your views of the established characters and combine those views with their position to somehow be better than the canon cast at everything? Truly you stride across the fertile fields of new ideas like a colossus. Yes, yes, I agree you make _**so**_ much more interesting a character than Tommen: truly he can go fuck himself." Because god forbid you should stretch yourself as a writer by trying to write a fic exploring Tommen's perspective and see what it was that stopped _**him**_ from becoming the savior of westeros it needed and deserved instead of your Gary Stu self-insert. Oh wait, my bad: I meant to say 'super serial totally 100 percent original character.' No, no, no. That makes so much less sense than slapping a Harry Potter cosplay on yourself and going 'yup this totes fits into the established world sooo much better.' Especially if it means you get to derail canon character personalities completely in order to fit them around _**YOUR**_ narrative right? All I have to say to you people is that there's easier ways of getting off. Like staring lovingly into a reflective surface and admiring yourself. Sure you run the risk of starving to death while getting lost in your own eyes, but that got Narcissus a flower and an adjective named after _**him**_! And surely if you're so much better than one fictional character, you can prove yourself the superior of another right?! Only one way to find out you shining diamond you. Won't you kindly give it a shot?


End file.
